Review Summary: it's like, feedback, man
Imagine the situation: you are attempting to vocal overdubs for your upcoming album; however, you have a problem. It seems as though a funkster metal band above you are blasting out some, uh, funky metal resulting in you not being able to sing properly. The question is, what do you do?
If you’re Sonic Youth, then the answer seems pretty obvious: make as much ***ing noise as possible.
“We decided to fight fire with molten lava and turned every amp we owned on to 10+ and leaned as many guitars and basses as we could plug in against the, and they roared/HOWLED like airplanes burning over the pacific—we could only enter the room with our hands against our ears and even then it was physically stunning—we ran a sick outmoded beatbox through the p.a. and it blew out horrendous distorted pulsations.” Thurston Moore
The result is pretty much
Silver Session (For Jason Knuth). However, only telling this probably gives a completely impression about this EP. This session of noise was broken up into eight, easily listenable pieces, totalling at 31 minutes and 8 seconds. It does, on occasion, reach heights of noise, with ear piercing feedback and the pounding beatbox blasting out throbbing noises. However, this is only on occasion. For the most part, its mixing has formed something entirely different. At times,
Silver Session almost has an ambient feel. Layers of feedback gradually appear and form a gentle structureless mass of low humming and buzzing. It becomes impossible to tell which instrument is which: they become one. It drones monotonously, rarely changing, if ever. Now and then, the feedback calmly pulses and throbs and vibrates at varying frequency and pitch. The feedback is, sometimes beautiful, in its repetitive, almost eerie or haunting way. Of course, it does, sometimes become too much and, eventually slightly tedious and dull.
Silver Session is an interesting EP, and it could be said to be one of Sonic Youth’s “weirdest!” , I suppose, along with some of SYRs. (Actually, this was an SKR, the ‘K’ refers to the Jason Knuth of the title, I believe: a fan who committed suicide).
“In a way, it’s my favourite record of ours” says Thurston Moore. And I guess, in a way, it is. But, by some similar, equally twisted logic, it, in a way, is their worst record. And most people probably think that way.
I, however, don’t know which one is more likely.
